With these thoughts in my mind I came to Italy and Sicily on my first visit.
My first impressions on arrival were those of strong disapproval - disapproval
of the kind of life which was there called the life of happiness, stuffed full
as it was with the banquets of the Italian Greeks and Syracusans, who ate to
repletion twice every day, and were never without a partner for the night; and
disapproval of the habits which this manner of life produces. For with these
habits formed early in life, no man under heaven could possibly attain to
wisdom - human nature is not capable of such an extraordinary combination.
Temperance also is out of the question for such a man; and the same applies to
virtue generally. No city could remain in a state of tranquillity under any
laws whatsoever, when men think it right to squander all their property in
extravagant, and consider it a duty to be idle in everything else except
eating and drinking and the laborious prosecution of debauchery. It follows
necessarily that the constitutions of such cities must be constantly changing,
tyrannies, oligarchies and democracies succeeding one another, while those who
hold the power cannot so much as endure the name of any form of government
which maintains justice and equality of rights.

With a mind full of these thoughts, on the top of my previous convictions, I
crossed over to Syracuse - led there perhaps by chance - but it really looks
as if some higher power was even then planning to lay a foundation for all
that has now come to pass with regard to Dion and Syracuse - and for further
troubles too, I fear, unless you listen to the advice which is now for the
second time offered by me. What do I mean by saying that my arrival in Sicily
at that movement proved to be the foundation on which all the sequel rests? I
was brought into close intercourse with Dion who was then a young man, and
explained to him my views as to the ideals at which men should aim, advising
him to carry them out in practice. In doing this I seem to have been unaware
that I was, in a fashion, without knowing it, contriving the overthrow of the
tyranny which; subsequently took place. For Dion, who rapidly assimilated my
teaching as he did all forms of knowledge, listened to me with an eagerness
which I had never seen equalled in any young man, and resolved to live for the
future in a better way than the majority of Italian and Sicilian Greeks,
having set his affection on virtue in preference to pleasure and self -
indulgence. The result was that until the death of Dionysios he lived in a way
which rendered him somewhat unpopular among those whose manner of life was
that which is usual in the courts of despots.